Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Whilst it is a drag when things break down, it's nice that it doesn't happen in the cold winter months, particularly when water is involved.

Anyway, yesterday was Liberation Day. Given that it coincided with that big crack splitting our water vasca open thus squirting thousands of liters of water all over the Maberga mountainside, no picnics and chocolate in the hills for these Americans. Although we did get to hike through this

and this

to get here

Those are the water reserves for the Consorzio del' Acqua di Maberga. I just made that name up for the group of us who share the ENORMOUS PAIN IN THE ASS the right to this water from the city aqueduct. Some of you long time readers will remember, 8 or so years back, the thrill I experienced when I thought our water troubles were over. Oh how naive I was. Who could have predicted that having city water would be MORE trouble than a natural spring that had been supplying water to the residents of Maberga for about a 900 years?** Not me.

In the long list of problems that have plagued this system, about a year ago we lost thousands of liters of water because the galleggiante in that vasca broke. Language acquisition is an interesting thing. I don't know what a galleggiante is called in english because, while I did have one in every toilet I've ever used, I've never had a conversation about this simple machine and therefore the name never took root in my english lexicon. This is a galleggiante

Specifically, that is the galleggiante that was floating around in the vasca, NOT connected to the arm which closed that water valve assuring the members of the Consorzio del' Acqua di Maberga that water won't continue to flow in an already full vasca creating pressure that would blow a seam open and spray liters of water all over the Maberga mountainside. When that broke last year whomever it was who fixed it did so by leaving that big one floating in the tank and replacing it with a much smaller one which was, as we learned yesterday, of a much poorer quality. The little guy filled with water....rendering it not much use as a flotation device. Quite a nice cannon ball, however.

So, Americans to the rescue...again....

.

Happy Liberation Day

*just for the record, that's last year's orto. it's pissing rain here today and while I do like you readers, not enough to walk up to the orto for a couple photos.

**yes, that was me trying to make maberga great again by selectively remembering the positive points of the spring-run water supply while forgetting the minor inconveniences of that system...namely, that it frequently didn't have water.